Posts by Quentin North

Ad block plus blocks this article

Here is a wired thing, ad block plus blocks on iOS this entire article, not just the ads, but the entire url. The rest of the reg is fine. Conspiracy?

The one use

The one use I could imagine (apart from crypto coin) is a decentralised register of academic achievement such as degree certificates. There are many many issuing authorities (universities and colleges) but once issued the credentials are fixed and for life. Validating someones academic credentials, especially internationally, is currently a chore that requires requesting a transcript from the institution either by an employer or the (former) student. For the university this is a pain in the storage as well as an, albeit fairly automated, admin chore that they could really do without. I could see blockchain potentially working in this space,

Apple blew it for me when it removed the finger print sensor and the audio jack. I still have my trusty iPhone 6s and just got the screen and battery refurbished. I also have another 6s in a box unopened for when my current one does eventually die or goes down the loo. I would like the XR for the IP67, but there is nothing else about it that makes me want it and the notch in general disrupts my sense of symmetry. I live in hope that a 6s like SE will appear as a budget option in the spring.

OnePlus = Apple for Android

Nothing really new in the religious following idea. Going back as far as the early Mac vs PC wars, Apple was always about belief in the brand rather than value for money.

TFT patent?

Anyone know why the team couldn't patent TFT?

15 million merits

Wasn't there a black mirror that was essentially this? That obviously went well.

Crawley

Err. Crawley is in West Sussex. However, Arqiva is in Crawley Court, Winchester, Hampshire, SO21 2QA

Break Key

The break key pre-dates any of the micro era computers and dates back to the 19th century telegraph. It was certainly on old teletypes used with mainframes in the 1950s and 60s and referred to a function called "line break". In the comms between a TTY terminal and the computer a line break effectively brought the signal level to a "space" condition (usually +5v IIRC) and would wake up a modem or multiplexor at the computer end. This would be used in some computer system as the login prompt key and also the abort program execution key. Indeed, even the 1985 IBM PC keyboard had a break key, but it was a alt-shifted function of the pause key. Quite why IBM didn't choose alt-break fro login/interrupt/reboot I don't know. More info at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Break_key

Spotify resets too

So is spotify, email this morning.

Spain, Bristol AND Sussex

How come you don't mention Sussex uni, which two of the paper's authors are from?

Outlook

They have still not fixed Outlook to make it identical to the Windows version.

Yet again, Im going to have to run Windows in Fusion/Parallels in order to get a proper Exchange client that doesn't break every five minutes and provides all the views, including the at a glance view with a side bar of upcoming events and tasks. Why can't MS just make Outlook work on a Mac, how hard can it be? Its the only reason I still run windows in a VM.

Mainly a public sector issue

For the public sector this effectively rules out the use of most cloud services as we are required to protect personal data and not transfer it to other jurisdictions without protection. Goodbye office 365, google apps etc, hello, on premise data centre, exchange, etc.

Other products are available

Galileo and ForeverMap on iOS both provide OS levels of offline mapping and in the case of ForeverMap, route planning too.

Language bias becaiuse internets

The issue I would have with this survey is that it is biased towards languages that are common for internet software development and therefore posted up on Gthub etc. If you took a look at much commercial software you might find a good level of use of older languages such as C, COBOL, PL/SQL, and even old 4GLs like UNIFACE and Pro-IV. In scientific computing you will find FORTRAN still in use.

Outlook 2016 still fails

I have had the outlook 2016 beta for a while and it still fails compared to outlook 2013. Calendar still doesn't properly look up user names from AD but just shows the standard email format name and you still can't get the at a glance summary of today's activities with diary events and tasks on the right sidebar of the Mail window. This latter point is a real shame because it is a really useful feature of the outlook for windows UI. If it still uses EWS it will probably regularly orphan repeating calendar entries too. I'm still living with that legacy of Entourage, a truly shite piece of software.

That said outlook 2016 doesn't suffer from the annoying greyed out flags in compressed view that outlook 2013 does. A nightmare if you are colur blind because you can't tell red from grey.

20 minutes into the future

Max Headroom

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom:_20_Minutes_into_the_Future

Galileo on iOS

Galileo on iOS provides OS maps fairly effectively and overlays Open StreetMap with offline cacheing and this is fine as far as it goes. As I have a canal boat, route planning for canals would be ideal with journey times including locks and notices of canal closures. Unfortunately the C&RT who run the canals stopped providing their useful plot your route and download a PDF service and I have yet to find a decent mapping app that will let you route plan canals apart from as a series of waypoints the same as walking.

Oh no it wasn't.

It's possible that this was not a commercial offering, but I sat in a car in Milton Keynes in 1981 and made a mobile phone call to the USA, so this 1986 date seems all wrong to me. From memory the phone I used was a true cellular car phone with a numeric keypad, single line numeric led display, and a diplexer and tx gear in the boot. Prior to this the company I worked for had Aircall radio phones, but they required the user to request the operator to make the call and patch it through.

Core store!

On a very small scale. And without the electrical overhead.

In business, no one can hear you scream.

As a large organisation with a mix of PC and Mac desktops Outlook 2011, and God forbid!, Entourage have been dismal failures as Exchange clients compared to Outlook Windows. The tweaks to Outlook 2011 does little to improve this. Forget it.

We also have Outlook 2015 Mac through a O365 sub, and whilst this is an improvement on Outlook 2011, it is still sufficiently far from Outlook Windows that its utility is second class. I am hoping that MS will address the shortcomings of Outlook 2015 before formal release and so make it 100% feature comparable with Outlook Windows, but I won't hold my breath.

You might ask why we use MS products in general, Exchange in particular and O365 subs? In short, because they are generally good products that require fairly minimal attention once set up and there is a large pool of people who can support them when they go wrong. For a business, renting software can make more sense.

Xenix

Wasn't Xenix in the mix here somewhere? I think Microsoft produced that about 1980 and this was some of the basis of the MS FUD campaign around SCO Unix and Linux.

Actually nothing very exciting here

This just looks like a SIP based cloud PBX service charged on a per user basis. Lync, or any number of PBX suppliers like Aastra or Unify, will do this for you and a whole lot more.

I wish the MNOs would bring back the old dual number services that Orange used to have a few years ago. I get a iPhone from my work, who pay for calls and data, but I don't want to give up having a separate personal number so I still have an old Nokia for that. I know I could go dual SIM on an 'droid phone, but Im a fanbois who doesn't want to pay Apple or Samsung prices.

Palm V

Never mind WebOS, Ive still got a Palm V, and for what it was intended to do I still think it is the best little PDA you can get.

Wouldn't it be funny if...

Amazon was to go bust and Apple bought the whole lot.

Wuala

In the EU if you require good privacy you might consider www.wuala.com which is EU hosted and provides client side encryption.

Divers

Already wear computers that tell them all that information and more including gas mix etc. They don't usually play music or record video, though.

Sounds like packet radio to me

Sound alike old-skool VHF packet radio with the GoTenna acting as a TNC & BBS. This was being done in 1980. Nothing new here.

I can't see this lasting because of the termination fees. Unlike in the US, where the call receiver (also) pays, in the EU the call maker pays. If they are offering 200 mins of calls to landlines as well as own network, each call will loose money.

Sophos AV works well, but there is a performance hit

We use Sophos AV and it works well. There is a free version for home use. As with all A/V there is a performance hit but on new Macs, especially those with SSDs, you won't notice it.